sekomi: overseer and protector of yuriJan 21
> "free" bsd
> look inside
> jail
Show threadティージェーグレェ1d ago
Indeed!

I think it's telling that OS X/macOS are FreeBSD derived, yet decided not to borrow the jails subsystem.

Word choice is important.

Some of PHK's other perspectives when it comes to things related to carceral constructs are extremely harrowing to read.

But, it's one thing to be outspoken about things.

It's another, when down stream maintainers, decide to go through the hassle of making sure they do not take your bad code and ideas along with them. Speaks volumes, without saying a word! Indeed, by removing lines of code!

Good hacking. ^_^
Show threadLisPi
@teajaygrey @sekomi > decide to go through the hassle of making sure they do not take your bad code and ideas along with them

Are they actually ineffective though? Why not just search & replace (if the code actually is good)?
5:55pmWeb
Show threadティージェーグレェ8h ago
I think the conjecture in this instance is: jails are not good.

Word choice matters.

Maybe, if PHK had called it chroot++? He did not.
Show threadLisPi8h ago
@teajaygrey That seems like a silly reason to discard it entirely rather than see what can be salvaged.

Cop cars are a good source of fuel to pump, even if it was previously used by cops. (For legal reasons this is a joke.)
Show threadティージェーグレェ7h ago
Your sense of humor is kind of lost on me, since I think petrofossil fuels are also a dead end. Moreover, I didn't realize I was in a comedy club, and having to explicitly declare jokes, typically ruins them.

If you are trying to make light of a subject involving incarceration? Might I suggest: you stop doing that.
Show threadLisPi7h ago
@teajaygrey No, I truly do support scavenging and do not think the source is inherently a reason not to.

Were electric cars more common or something else, my example would've involved such components or such a something else.

However, I also do not wish to cause my fedi host problems, therefore I cannot advocate crime.
Show threadティージェーグレェ4h ago
Scavenging, as you refer to it, may be OK in some circumstances.

When it comes to code; for whatever reason my mind is drifting towards the warez scene and keygens "scavenging" code from proprietary software to check to see if a key is valid or not. ;)

But, FreeBSD's jails, aren't like that. It's open source.

If it were good: Apple could have made use of it; they borrow code liberally from many other open source projects. FreeBSD is already upstream from OS X/macOS.

Maybe: jails just aren't good? Maybe, jails and incarceration and related metaphors, are intrinsically evil? I think they are. I do not work for Apple, nor am I a FreeBSD committer, but having known folks who were both of those and not evil? I kind of think that they probably intentionally avoided the jails subsystem, for good reasons.
Show threadLisPi3h ago

@teajaygrey I have somewhat more fantastical imagery come to mind at the concept, but you probably wouldn't care much about that.

When it comes to code; for whatever reason my mind is drifting towards the warez scene and keygens "scavenging" code from proprietary software to check to see if a key is valid or not. ;)

I have somewhat mixed feelings about those. They were popular here at the time, as they liberated paygated proprietary software from its paygate.

That still left it as proprietary software though, only as freeshare or shareware.

I don't think at the time it pushed out awareness of Free/Libre Software as one simply didn't hear about it at all here, so the alternative for users would mostly have been "just don't do the thing", but I'm not quite sure.

These days with the Internet and web having grown as they have, I would say it is counterproductive and potentially harmful to keep on developing them (with possible exceptions where Free/Libre options cannot exist for some reasons such as regulatory ones; which typically represents a different top-down harm instead and cracking the allowed option may not be the preferable way to fight back against it).

If it were good: Apple could have made use of it; they borrow code liberally from many other open source projects. FreeBSD is already upstream from OS X/macOS.

From the sound of it in your other technical post, they just aren't particularly amazing. They're a filesystem-specific namespace mechanism one kernel bug away from failing and less general & powerful than capsicum (which is more of a real security mechanism).

Maybe: jails just aren't good? Maybe, jails and incarceration and related metaphors, are intrinsically evil? I think they are.

I'm inclined to agree. They generally seem to be more, at best, of a way to avoid addressing problems. (Fixing society? Perish the thought.)

but having known folks who were both of those and not evil? I kind of think that they probably intentionally avoided the jails subsystem, for good reasons

Given the brainworms you describe some of the core maintainers as having, it does sound considerably less benign than name-related creative bankruptcy.

Show threadティージェーグレェ7h ago
Word choice aside: If as a precursor to paradigms such as containers, the FreeBSD jails subsystem is svelte with relatively low overhead because it's basically a filesystem abstraction.

However, because it is a filesystem abstraction, it isn't as robust as a full blown VM/hypervisor. FreeBSD also has things such as bhyve these days for folks who need that.

There are other pitfalls of containerization (not just performance penalties with VMs and hypervisors) such as bitrot (see: Docker container vulnerabilities shipping old versions of code) but IMHO, such things are too often misconstrued as security tools, when all of them are better utilized as development tools and are not great for prod (IMHO, they're the opposite of what should be deployed in prod).

There's of course, also the question of whether any of that was appropriate for Apple to adopt. Apple does have their own hypervisor framework, but they never really seemed to delve deeply into containers or chroot realms, they have their own sandboxing framework too.

It should probably be noted that Apple used to employ jkh (Jordan Hubbard, one of the co-founders of FreeBSD). I know Jordan personally. I don't know PHK personally. I don't know if the same is true of Jordan though, it's possible he knows PHK and they're on good terms.

However, when I read some of PHK's other writings (mostly on ACM as far as I can discern; though their site is variously paywalled and not easy to cite), he has a lot of perspective on the legal system and courts and his perspective, to me, screams as if it is someone who hasn't lived within the USA and contended with carceral slavery or the reality that over 90% if incarcerated individuals within the USA never even had a jury trial, and most of them end up with "plea" deals because they are so poorly "served" by so-called "public defenders". Perhaps, he might even favor slavery? He certainly seems to be of the opinion that courts and law, should supersede more or less any other realm from what I read of his writings.

Like, the more I read of him, the less I ever want to have anything to do with him, and most certainly want to stay the fuck away from his code too.

It's not sufficient to search and replace some word choices. It's best avoided entirely.

CC: @[email protected]